The Google Contacts application really hasn't changed much over the years - after all, it just has to store contacts. Last year the app was updated with a hamburger menu and the ability to merge duplicates. Now Google has released version 2.0 of the Contacts app, with more design improvements and changes to how contacts are sorted.

New design

Contacts 2.0 has several minor interface tweaks all over the place, which address a few gripes I (and likely some of you) have had with the application. The actual list of contacts looks the same, but the slide-out menu now features an account switcher.

Left: Contacts 1.6; Center, Right: Contacts 2.0

Previously, the app would show all contacts from all your synced Google accounts together. Now you can easily keep contacts separate, or still combine all of them if you want. Another noticeable change is on the contacts themselves - the user icon has been reduced to a small circle instead of covering the top half of the screen.

Left: Contacts 1.6; Right: Contacts 2.0

There are a few other changes on the contact pages. The menu has removed the option to link a contact, but it has a new 'Move' item that moves contacts to another Google account. The edit button has also been moved to a floating action button.

Other changes

Moving on to the app settings, you can now choose which accounts to use when exporting contacts. Contacts 2.0 also supports Android O's notification channels, with a single channel called 'Notifications' (really helpful name, I know).

A quick look at the APK code reveals that this channel is used for export status notifications. I'm not really sure what the point of implementing Notification Channel support is if your app only has one kind of notification, but props to the Contacts team for getting a head start on Android O support.

Finally, there is a new splash screen when you open Contacts for the first time:

It basically just tells you that the app will automatically back up your contacts, which might not have been immediately obvious to people using Android for the first time.

APK Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

I guess it's largely inconsequential, but it such a Google thing to do.

Grey

Corbin, please. You have to rip Google for this. It's inexcusable. Someone needs to put pressure on the company for their ridiculous UI beliefs. Wasted space galore, circular images for the sake of circular images. This is the peak of their insanity.

We used to rip Google for their UI issues all the time. Now they are trying, but that doesn't mean we no longer criticize them. Look at this! I still remember the Nexus 4 announcement, when they introduced this version of Contacts. They praised the big, beautiful, high-res images, and the fact that the new camera could capture them. Now it's five years later and we've gone in the complete opposite direction?

Please, someone at AP step up to the plate.

Filipe Santos

Yup, the overall changes are very good but that wasting space is so bad.... They try at least like Corbin said

morteum

Why are these tiny contact pictures becoming a thing?

Filipe Santos

People are starting to use glasses 😂😂

Jimk4003

I think it's because a lot of contact photos are low Res images synced of social media that look awful when blown up to fill half a screen.

A smaller photo might not be as dramatic, but at least it isn't a pixelated mess.

Blurry contact photos are only a problem if you don't care about your contact photos. And if you don't care about them, then you aren't interested in fixes.

Savage Alien

I remember some of this being Google's fault. A while back, before the whole Material Design era, There was inconsistent syncing between web and mobile and somehow resulted in low res version of the images being synced even when you used high res images since the servers would keep low res copies for thumb nails and things.

tismondo

Has this problem been fixed? It definitely happened to me - I stopped bothering managing my contact photos because I got tired of blurry versions syncing across every time I replace my phone or flash a ROM.

Yes, it has since been fixed. I haven't had the issue in a few years now.

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I honestly prefer the old one, never had an issue with "wasted space." It's not really wasted, it's a design decision, and I think it's effective in that it treats the contact as a person and not just a bunch of random data; it helped to identify who's contact information you where looking at. I hope this doesn't affect how phone calls come in...

Chris Wachtman

I really prefer the old design on the left. I set decent photos for my frequent contacts, and I enjoy seeing them prominently displayed. Anyone else use the Contact homescreen widget?

Alfredo Hernández

Exactly, it would suck big time if they gave the Phone app the same treatment.

incognito27

I wouldn't call the left one a waste of space. It actually looks nice. There is nothing wrong with it.
The right one though. Ooohooo. The circular icon seems pointless.

Winston

This is why I like Samsung's Contacts app. It displays a tiny circle like the version 2.0 one if the image is low res, but displays a half-height full-res image like the earlier build if it has an HD one. Which you can swipe down to view in its entirety.

Seriously, this is so stupid. Why selling big screen phones if it's to have ridiculous tiny pictures!!??
If people have blurry pictures, that's their problems.

A lot of us took time to use "high res" pictures for all our contacts. And we have to deal with people who doesn't care.... >:(

F4LL0U7

I was hoping the Contacts app would bring in the recently-removed feature from Google+ that allows you to keep your contacts up to date, using your contacts' linked Google accounts and downloading that info into your own Contacts app.

Since they removed that feature from G+, when I got a new phone I had to download an old version of G+, sync contacts, and then update G+.

Another gripe I have about Contacts: every time I reset my phone, the contacts that I previously merged (before resetting) become unmerged and I have to do it all over again.

Michael Tran

I think it just pulls automatically now. I added a new contact and entered in their gmail and it pulled the photo automatically. The option is gone from G+ but it still did it anyway.

F4LL0U7

Pulling the photo always worked, but linking with G+ pulled in all other info, like address, phone, etc. as well.

Michael Tran

Ah okay. I understand now.

cadtek91

This also took away the ability for the phone to download your own photo for the User account photo in the quicksettings drawer.

Savage Alien

I've never liked having a blank user picture, and each time I wiped my phone I'd be frustrated having to remember how to get mine to show up. Always surprised this was a feature "buried" in Google+.... and now it's gone? No other way to have your google photo to show up?

F4LL0U7

Can you believe that?! The only other way is to manually select a photo yourself. There doesn't seem to be any other way to pull in your Google profile pic, other than installing an old version of G+.

Disqusman

Yup...only realised that yesterday when I reset my Nexus 6P. Sux. I manually set a photo...but I may download an older version of G+ to get all the contacts to sync.

cadtek91

Not that I know of. You could manually add the same photo but eh.

F4LL0U7

I hate that! That's the main reason why I grabbed an old version of G+, so I could have my profile pic show up.

Phil

Worst decision ever. I see I'm not the only one who keeps an old Version of G+ around for that exactly. Downloads at APK Mirror must have gone up quite a lot :D

F4LL0U7

I should probably do that too. Now that I think of it, I have no idea which version I download. Which version is it?

Tiuri Elvander

If you add a picture to your Allo profile, this picture shows up in the quick settings drawer.

cadtek91

I have an Allo picture, but still no user picture.

YouNex

Merging contacts has always been a mess, it never syncs properly. Just copy any additional details and remove the other doublons, keep only 1 per each contact. It's manual but more fail-proof

This used to bug me too. I think if you merge contacts via the new web interface (the pretty material design one, not the old Gmail-looking one), it will sync the changes across everything. It's been a while since I've had to merge duplicates, though -- somebody let me know if this is incorrect.

It's mainly with those people who use low-res pics for their Google account.

Savage Alien

I'd take fuzzy photo over this new design.
I have maybe one low res contact photo and I picked it myself for nostalgia reasons.
Cameras on phones are only getting better, too, so this isn't a great excuse to use going forward... (and even much older phone would likely take passable photos)

Luzandro

Haven't seen this for a long time, but even if this is a real problem for some people, there are better ways to solve it. For example I've seen a dialer/contacts app (don't recall the name) where some sort of dots effect was applied to low res images, which made them look quite nice actually

roberto.elena

Can the contact names still be edited using multiple fields like name prefix, first name, middle name, etc. or is it all one field now like in the new web version?

Tiuri Elvander

Customising which groups show up doesn't work for me. People from other groups are still shown in the list.

Terrible design. Haven't updated my Phone Dialer app either because they made the same change to it months ago.

Android Developer

It's even worse during call.
What's the point of having HQ image for contacts, if I can't see them nicely during call...
I tried to request for this here:https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36705104
But for some reason they didn't agree.

Can you pick which photo to use from the multiples available in a merged account? It annoys me no end I can't pick the really lovely photo of my wife, instead of just the lovely one Google picked. It used to be a feature, then it went away somewhere.

captchas

Click edit and then click the picture and select your own

Trevor Hawk

They also removed the ability to customize which contacts to display in settings

That's a local profile. It's not available on the web. In the Gmail app, when I ask it to add my email to contacts, it can't see my "Your Info", and it instead looks for a contact entry.

It doesn't exist. Android is 8 years old and does not have this option.

Tiuri Elvander

Your Google+ profile???

Grey

Which is not a part of Contacts. Also, maybe you don't want to use Google+ but would like to have a "Self" profile in your contacts (without making yourself your own contact entry).

captchas

Menu (hamburger) > settings > your info

Grey

Which is only good for the phone it is on. It's not available on your Contacts. So an app like Gmail can't pull my "Your Info" information to know my own email address. And my information isn't online in my Web Contacts. And if I switch to a new phone, that information is gone.

Winston

Being a Google app, I'm surprised it's not already on version 89.7

JG

I have a cross-platform upgrade that involves Contacts I'd love to see Google make...

Google made a comment about their commitment to helping improve online security [probably in an article talking about their use of HTTPS helping to encrypt the majority of web traffic]. I'd like to see them step this commitment up.

They're working on a key server that's supposedly more focused on linking the key to a particular profile (to ensure the key belongs to the person claiming its theirs). I'd like to see Google launch the service. Create a new app that allows us to either create a new key or upload an existing key.

Update Contacts to link to the key server database and automatically pair contacts with their corresponding public keys (if a match exists). Update Android Messages, Hangouts, Allo, GMail, et al to automatically encrypt any outgoing messages to contacts with public keys.

Then even non-technical people can begin using encrypted messages. All it'd take is to download an app, tap a button or two and bam.

Disqusman

My God! Who made that decision to go with the tiny circular image?! The large contact picture is so much more beautiful. I really dislike how they changed the UI in the dialer to the small contact picture as well :/

ast00

The new contact page with the tiny picture and lots of wasted space is a step back.

Shailesh Kumar

Is it only exclusive to pixel devices?

How can I have this on my moto x style?

Daan Smit

Guys, I am just not able to display contacts from a number of Google contact groups and my outlook contacts. I can only see my outlook contacts if I either opt for viewing all candidates or only outlook contacts. This also happens on the standard OnePlus3t contacts app. It used to work on Marshmallow though. Is this an Android issue?

Cleaner? You mean they got rid of the colorful highlights and made it into another white/gray bland app. They could have scaled down the image a bit to take less space. But a full hero image looks much better than a huge gray space with a tiny avatar

iamakii

I'm liking this cleaner look and interface

Nick Felker

Regarding notification channels, they will be required in Android O for all apps before a notification can be presented. So expect to see other apps follow suit.

Just

Is the rollout halted? I'm still not seeing 2.0. Not that if I crave to have it whith this new tiny avatar circle.